Little Missenden Festival 2008

Gemma Rosefield cello, Nicola Eimer piano

Gemma Rosefield has won a string of prizes, including the prestigious Pierre Fournier Award at the Wigmore Hall in 2007.  The Strad described her as “A mesmerising musical treasure”; the Evening Standard as “A phenomenal talent”, and BBC Music Magazine as “One to watch”. A recent recording by Gemma was described by the Australian Magazine Stringendo as “Truly magical. She soars, she floats, she is operatic, she makes you weep”.

Nicola Eimer got her Master’s degree from New York’s Juilliard School, where she held a Fulbright Scholarship to study with Joseph Kalichstein. She has been a busy soloist and chamber musician – and has won a number of prizes. She was recently elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, where she teaches piano and chamber music.

“She has presence, technical mastery and a wide repertoire, that is bound to establish her as a real presence” (Hampstead and Highgate Express)

Gemma Rosefield review from Camden New Journal

Nicola Eimer website

Event 12 2008

Cello & piano

Rosefield and Eimer

Saturday October 18th,3.00 pm

Little Missenden Church

Tickets £11, unreserved  

£18 combined tickets for Events 11 and 12 (if booked in advance)

The Shostakovich sonata is an early work but with plenty of typical thumbprints – inventiveness, sardonic wit, energy, icy bleakness, driving ostinatos.

Vaughan Williams’s love of folk music permeates his work.  Here he sets half-a-dozen lovely melodies – elaborating them subtly rather than just transcribing them.

The duo chose the last two pieces for their Park Lane Group recital last January.  Cecilia McDowall’s Falling Angels (2008), a limpid meditation for cello and piano, was inspired by the decaying beauty of Venice.  James Francis Brown dedicated his “powerfully declaimed and deeply eloquent Prospero’s Isle” to Gemma Rosefield.  

“Rosefield and Eimer selected well with the substantial Prospero’s Isle by James Francis Brown, where Rosefield’s dark mahogany tone brought out all the eloquence of some skilful traditional writing” (George Hall, Guardian)

Little Missenden Festival 2008